Uneversaurus

From the flickering 3D eye on the cover to the punning title, it’s clear that this guide to dinosaurs promises a lively approach to the subject. Professor Potts, dinosaur investigator, concentrates on just one aspect of these creatures – their skin colour. In spite of all the fossilized bones, with grooves that show where muscles were placed, and computer animation that can show how these animals moved, no scientist can prove what dinosaur skin actually looked like because, in the words of the title, You-Never-Saw-Us. So is it spots, stripes or the colours of the rainbow? Professor Potts explores all these possibilities in his wonderfully graphic artwork scenes, enlivened by speech bubbles. Along the way we learn a great deal about animal colouring and camouflage, about countershading and disruptive colouring. Always information is presented in a way that makes the reader think – whether dinosaurs blushed to cool off or to signal anger, whether they changed colour with age, or whether there were colour differences between males and females. A giant colour wheel on the front endpaper is annotated in every shade from Glyptodon Green and Brontosaurus Blush to Razzle Dazzle Raptor and True Blue Troodon, while an invitation to invent your own super-duper-saurus closes the book. Let’s hope, as the cover hints, that there will be more titles to follow.